Since 1980, nine countries in Central America and the Caribbean have had at least half of their annual gross domestic product (GDP) wiped out by a natural catastrophe. The 2010 earthquake in Haiti had an estimated impact of 120% of GDP.

Over the past 50 years, 75 major flood events have been reported in Argentina, affecting around 13 million people and taking more than 500 lives. With the equivalent of USD 22.5bn lost since 1980, floods are the most costly natural catastrophe affecting the country.Adjusting for the country‘s GDP growth, the same events today would have caused accumulated losses of USD 43.5bn.

Underinsurance of property risks is a global challenge. Much of the protection gap is due to uninsured global natural catastrophe risk, which has been rising over the past 40 years. This report focuses on the property protection gap in Latin America. The protection gap is defined as the difference between total economic losses and insured losses. With economic development and ongoing urbanisation, the value of property at risk has outpaced the purchase of insurance in many countries.

Agriculture employs one in four in Peru. A highly diversified sector, it includes all segments – from commercial to smallholder farming. Export income from coffee is important to the economy but at the same time it’s exposed tomany perils: The coffee leaf rust outbreak in 2012/2013 was just the latest event to hit the sector

Agriculture employs one in four in Peru. A highly diversified sector, it includes all segments – from commercial to smallholder farming. Export income from coffee is important to the economy but at the same time it’s exposed tomany perils: The coffee leaf rust outbreak in 2012/2013 was just the latest event to hit the sector

Mexico City, a metropolis of around 21 million people is plagued by regular summer flooding which makes life utterly miserable for the city’s inhabitants, just one recent example being the inundation caused by Tropical Storm Ernesto in 2012. It is also exposed to substantial earthquake risk.